People travel by aircraft to see the sites or attend events. Travel for Aircraft is about travel for aircraft to see them in their various locations — be they museums, static displays, airfield ramps or languishing in fields.

The Battle for An Loc in April 1972, during the Vietnam war, saw the first use of helicopters against tanks. Bell AH-1 Huey Cobras decisively and dramatically stopped a large column of tanks at the literal last moment. Although Mil had been well into designing the Mi 24 (NATO reporting name “Hind”) this event must have, at the very least, reinforced Soviet thinking as well as Mil’s design. The Hind was meant to be a flying tank using the precision of a helicopter — the ability to get close enough to “grab the adversary by the belt” as opposed to conventional attack aircraft. Heavily armored (a titanium tub in the cockpit and plating in the cabin) as well as heavily armed (rockets, bombs, cannon and machine gun) the Hind can also carry half of an infantry squad, or fly antitank missions as well as perform ground attack duties. So, it may be somewhat poetic to observe this early Hind “A” model at a museum in Vietnam — the first rotary wing-borne flying tank in the country where rotary wing-borne antitank warfare first began. This example of a Mil Mi 24 (Hind A) is on exhibit in the Air Defense – Air Force Museum (Bảo tàng Phòng không– Không quân) which is located in Hanoi, Vietnam — or Hà Nội, Việt Nam to use the beautiful diacritical marks in the Vietnamese language — use the search window to find the review as well as other aircraft there. Our thanks to Catherine Dowman for visiting this museum and capturing these images on a spectacularly hot day!